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November 16, 2012

McTaggart: atheistic mysticism; Nussbaum: philosophical humanism

Although
McTaggart was an atheist from a very early age, he was certainly a religious
person, at least on his own definition of “religion”. In chapter 1 of Some
Dogmas of Religion, McTaggart defined “religion” as “an emotion that rests
on a conviction of harmony between ourselves and the universe at large.”
According to McTaggart, a necessary condition on judging that there is harmony
between the universe at large and ourselves is that one judge that the universe
is good on the whole (Some Dogmas of Religion, section 11)…

McTaggart
was a mystic. McTaggart held that there are two essential characteristics of
mysticism. (These two characteristics are articulated in his article
“Mysticism”, which is reprinted in Philosophical Studies.) First,
mysticism requires the recognition of a unity of the universe that is greater than
that recognized by ordinary experience or by science. The universe might be
highly unified without it being the case that the apparently numerically
distinct parts of the universe are actually identical. According to McTaggart,
Hegel believed in a mystic unity although he did not believe that this unity
amounted to numerical identity. On McTaggart's interpretation, Hegel identified
God as a community of finite spirits. McTaggart's own view was substantially
the same, although he did not label the community of spirits “God”.

A
second essential characteristic of mysticism is the view that it is possible to
be conscious of this unity in a way different from that of ordinary discursive
thought. We can be conscious of abstract truths or of spiritual reality directly
in a matter akin to sense perception. McTaggart calls this consciousness
“mystic intuition”, and that of which it is a recognition “mystic unity”.
Mystic unity is more fundamental than mystic intuition. The existence of mystic
intuition implies the existence of mystic unity, but the clearly the converse
does not hold. The universe might be highly unified without anyone recognizing
that it is so.

In
McTaggart's philosophy we find that a serious attempt is made to demonstrate
the synthetic character of space and time as both subjective and objective. He
calls them phenomena bene fundata in as much as they are not mere phenomena in
Kant's sense of the term, but are such phenomena as correspond to some
indisputable features of ultimate reality. Space is characterised by
co-existence of a plurality of reciprocally exclusive parts and by infinite
divisibility of these parts. Now, the features of co-existence, reciprocal
exclusion, and infinite divisibility are ultimately real, because according to
McTaggart reality consists of an impersonal unity of a plurality self-subsistent
spiritual substances or selves, which are mutually exclusive in respect of
their existence. The nature of each of these self-subsistent selves is
infinitely divisible, the terms in the process of such division being
perceptions of other selves and their perceptions. What is erroneous or
illusory about space is its appearance as an attribute of matter or as locus of
the existence of matter. McTaggart advances an array of close-knit arguments to
demonstrate the unreality of matter...

SPACE-TIME
AS SELF-EXTENSION OF THE SPIRIT

It
should be abundantly clear from the foregoing discussion that according to the
Integral Idealism of Sri Aurobindo the fundamental reality of space-time is
spiritual self-extension of ultimate reality. Reality is, in its original
status and intrinsic nature, the spaceless and timeless Spirit. Space and time
are the same Reality self-extended to contain the deployment of what is within
it. Now, the self-extension of the infinite and eternal Spirit must be infinite
and eternal too. So it may be said that the fundamental truth of space is the
infinity of the Infinite, whereas the fundamental truth of time is the eternity
of the Eternal…

While
Bradley's conception of eternity as the transmuted essence of time is true of
the Spirit in its self-absorption, Royce's view of eternity as a totum
simul or as the whole-consciousness of an infinite succession is true
of the Spirit in its cosmic universality or dynamic creativity, and the
ordinary view of eternity as an endless march of time is true of the Spirit in
its individual entanglement in the creative flux. 10:19 AM

Alfred
North Whitehead godfather of Process Thought argued for a God within his
overall cosmological system. Fairly unique contribution relative to modern era
philosophers in that regard. So Process Thought is deeply imbued with a Natural
Theological strain. 4:38 AM

Nussbaum
undertakes a forensic analysis of the details of Greek philosophy and tragedy
which she brings to bear upon questions of moral luck, tragic conflict and
practical deliberation. What makes the book so great as philosophy, rather than
simply historical scholarship, is how it manages to draw so much sustenance
from the literature it considers whilst putting its ideas to work in providing
vivid ‘reminders’ and ‘objects of comparison’ (to resort to Wittgesteinian
terminology) with which to illuminate our ethical lives. Its approach to
literature is deeply philosophical; and conversely too, with its philosophical
proclivities being similarly literary. This is another example of what I have
been calling philosophical humanism: a confidence in the narratives we tell
about ourselves and what matters to us. 5:09 PM